The Contradiction of Rob Krar

How a 37-year-old pharmacist became the country’s most feared ultramarathoner.

In the summer of 2013, a then-36-year-old night pharmacist from Hamilton, Ontario, entered the Western States Endurance Run, one of the world’s most competitive 100-mile races. It would be the farthest he’d ever run—by 50 miles.

If he finished, the race would take him and the 276 other participants on a scrambling tour of the California high country. From the start at Squaw Valley, the runners would arc west through the Sierra Nevada, climbing some 18,000 total feet and descending 23,000 feet more, all the way into the town of Auburn on the outskirts of Sacramento. For the majority of the field, the most sought-after prize is a belt buckle earned for finishing in 24 hours.

Barely 15 hours after the athletes disappeared into the mountains, the pharmacist, Rob Krar, came running into view outside the finish at the Placer High School track. He had second place firmly in hand, a mere 4 minutes and 38 seconds—the ultramarathoning equivalent of a photo finish—behind two-time champ Timothy Olson.

“I have no idea where those 15 hours went,” Krar says. “I was just a totally different being.”

His obscure racing history made the feat all the more confounding. There wasn’t much evidence of his running before Western. He’d competed on an athletic scholarship at Butler University and notched a 2:25 at Boston, but these were footnotes rather than explanations. Traditionally, ultra has had about as much to do with track and marathoning as downhill skiing does with Nordic, although crossovers have become less rare. Krar’s Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim FKT (or fastest known time, a world record of sorts for the trails) that spring may have turned some heads, but the canyon’s 42 miles didn’t prove he’d survive 100.

Two weeks prior to that Grand Canyon crossing, Krar had competed in his first 50-miler at the Leona Divide race. He won, broke the course record and earned automatic entry into Western States.

“He just jumped in the most competitive 100,” Olson says, acknowledging Krar’s decision to race Western, which came only eight weeks before the start. “Definitely insane.”

Fans and other runners were hesitant to write it off as a fluke; like open-ocean sailing or free climbing, there’s not a lot of beginner’s luck in ultramarathoning. The distance is defined as any race longer than 26.2 miles; the real ultra racing, according to die-hards, happens after 60 miles, when—not unlike a mountaineer climbing in the “death zone”—the runner is slowly dying.

To lace up for Western is to enter running lore itself—the race’s origins are as peculiar as the breed of people dotting its trails. Originally the world’s pre-eminent horse endurance challenge, Western States Trail Ride got its first two-legged competitor in 1974 when Gordy Ainsleigh finished the race. By 1977, 14 men ran in the world’s first 100-mile footrace, and eventually more feet than hooves toed the starting line.

Western would remain Krar’s sole loss for 2013. He went on to win his next three races before hanging it up for the season in early December. In a year that he completed his first 50-miler, then first 100 at Western, he won five races and set two course records, collected $15,000 and bested most of his competition by margins of time almost seismic. UltraRunning magazine named Krar its Male Ultrarunner of the Year.

The North Face offered him a professional running contract last fall. Between training and race appearances, it has amounted to a second job, one he juggles between 10-hour graveyard shifts at a local pharmacy.

Unlike many professional runners, who often must acclimate to fame at a young age, Krar had lived most of a normal adult life—doctorate, career, house, marriage—before ever seeing his name in print. Already self-effacing, he met the onslaught of attention with a series of bashful quips. During dinner at home one evening in the early spring, a plaque for Canadian Ultrarunner of the Year arrives with his picture. He palms it like a cheap trinket and files it absentmindedly behind the KitchenAid mixer, wondering aloud if a picture of him and his wife might fit in the frame.

Krar’s reticence at first fit snugly into the idea that he’d come from out of nowhere, a nearly middle-aged wunderkind. More Benjamin Button than Bobby Fischer, Krar shared in everyone’s surprise, responding to post-race interviews with clipped astonishment. Golly, it’s just great to be here—yeah, as puzzled as you.

But by March of this year, Krar has eased off the aw-shucks humility. Speaking from the townhouse he and his wife, Christina Bauer, share in their adopted hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, he says that, sure, the attention was flattering, but the whole out-of-nowhere bit? That was just another part of the ride—he knew he could compete well if he found his niche in the sport.

Krar avoids or coyly dodges every question about why he races ultras. Why he races at all, in fact. Because if it wasn’t from out of nowhere, then where has it all come from?

Later that day, Krar runs some errands downtown, the snow-dusted peak of Mount Elden rising 9,299 feet in the background. Dropping by Run Flagstaff, the local running store, Krar chats with some buddies and, raising his eyebrows, nods over at the wall. Above the shoe racks, the owners have painted Krar and his now-famous beard, silhouetted against him like a great fuzzy lobster bib, into their hall-of-fame mural. Pointing out each runner in turn, Krar lands on himself last and says, “And. There. I. Am.” The man and the image of the man, side by side.

Krar grew up the younger of two boys in Hamilton, Ontario, a city southwest of Toronto. Larry, his father, taught elementary and middle school. His mother, Carolyn, worked as a nurse. It was a tightknit, middle-class family, which Krar dismisses with a wave of his hand: “normal, happy.” Krar began training for triathlons in high school and at 16 made the Canadian national team, traveling to New Zealand to race in the world triathlon championships in 1994.

Like many Canadians, the Krars hoot out their OUs. When one speaks, the other “mm-hmms” with approval. Recently retired and living in the Okanagan Valley in rural British Columbia, Rob’s parents are delightfully flummoxed about his success and, search as they might through his past, they can’t account for its origins. They alternately describe Rob as serious, gentle and free-willed. “Holy smokes, he can be very stubborn,” says Larry, who now does volunteer maintenance on a system of snowshoe trails he helped develop. “Rob’s never had a leader,” Carolyn quickly adds.

At Butler, Krar focused on middle-distance and ended up training alone a lot. “I’d run a fast 800 during winter track my freshman year,” he says, “so I got designated a middle-distance guy.”

After studying biology his freshman year, he entered pre-pharmacy and was accepted into the rigorous doctor of pharmacy program late in his sophomore year. Friends warned him he couldn’t run and succeed academically. “Hearing that,” Krar says, “my stubbornness was responsible for me picking pharmacy as much as anything else.”

He graduated with what he felt were only modest PRs (1:51 for 800m; 3:44 for 1500m). Taking a well-paying job with Walgreens, Krar left Indiana in 2002 and settled in Phoenix. He was soon assigned to the night shift—9 p.m. to 8 a.m., seven days on, seven days off—a schedule he’s now worked for more than a decade.

He signed a three-year contract, but things quickly fell apart. Krar and his longtime girlfriend broke up, and he loathed Phoenix. He barely ran for nearly three years.

Slowly stirring his double cappuccino in downtown Flagstaff, Krar has all the trappings of the hipster mountain man—flannel, turquoise ear gauges, Subaru out front—but he’s rail thin. You can see down to his elbows when his cuffs are buttoned. At 5-foot-8, 130 pounds, with hazel eyes, Krar looks, most of the time, stoically amused. Only occasionally does he broaden his face, unearthing a mischievous smile.

And the beard? You could imagine a lot of old metal-heads raising a glass. But the thing’s just wiry enough that you get flickering projections of the handsome jawline below.

Historically, ultramarathoners have been built for the workload, more loggers than trail runners. But Krar—chest thrust out, slight frame, pitter-pattering up on his toes—is more like a beach extra in “Chariots of Fire.” He’s rigid in the shoulders and back, but pliant and springy below the belt. Watching his size 8.5 feet glance off rocks, there’s something of an Irish dancer in him.

Krar’s rep around town pegs him as even-keeled, the model Canadian—all alpha waves and positive vibes. Mike Smith, Krar’s old roommate in Flagstaff and now the women’s cross country coach at Georgetown University, says as much: “You watch Rob play with his cats—listening to Natalie Merchant and Indigo Girls when he works out—just a soft soul.”

In conversation, Krar wanders through topics, darting suddenly when curiosity strikes, then turning a subject over and over again. Almost excessively deferring, he’s careful to keep a healthy conversational ratio. When he does commandeer a subject—like climate change or sports agents (Krar represents himself)—his questions typically outnumber his opinions.

To some degree, Krar’s centeredness is typical for an ultrarunner. Like the Sierra Club hosting a Burning Man fun run, ultras attract their share of hippies and weirdos, basically anyone groovy enough to chance kidney failure or losing all their toenails for a shot at a most excellent runner’s high. Christopher McDougall, in his bestselling book, Born to Run, compared one group of ultrarunners to beatniks: “... poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions.”

Like other subcultures, ultrarunning is, at its heart, a crucible, a place that feeds a deeper kind of addiction. Timothy Olson’s pitch was simple—and unwittingly literal: “It’s so dope, dude.”

Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see how Krar has come to embrace more of the “bearded mystique,” as his folks call it. And yet, unlike his compatriots, Krar doesn’t appear particularly afflicted, or even that battle-hardened. In fact, it seems Krar has become better at competing at exactly the same rate as his personality relaxes.